[SFDXA] A bunch of balloons delivered basic Internet to 100, 000 Puerto Rico residents

[Bill]

  A bunch of balloons delivered basic Internet to 100,000 Puerto Rico
  residents

Alphabet 
<https://www.androidauthority.com/alphabet-q3-2017-revenues-810461/>‘s 
Project Loon 
<https://www.androidauthority.com/project-loon-alphabets-next-spinoff-company-807422/> 
might still be experimental in nature, but it just delivered real hope 
to 100,000 Puerto Rico residents in what the Project Loon team called 
the fastest deployment of its Internet-providing balloons ever.

Head of Project Loon Alastair Westgarth confirmed the deployment of the 
balloons over part of the hurricane-ravaged island in a recent blog 
post, saying that they launched from Nevada and are hovering over “the 
hardest hit parts of [Puerto Rico].” According to Westgarth, the Project 
Loon team is collaborating with AT&T 
<https://www.androidauthority.com/huawei-mate-10-pro-att-813454/>and 
T-Mobile 
<https://www.androidauthority.com/sprint-t-mobile-merger-canceled-812514/> 
to provide 100,000 of the island’s residents with emergency Internet 
service:

    Working with AT&T and T-Mobile, Project Loon is now supporting basic
    communication and Internet services like sending text messages and
    accessing information online for some people with LTE-enabled phones.

This is a new venture for the Project Loon team, since this is the first 
time they have utilized machine learning powered algorithms to keep the 
balloons clustered over Puerto Rico. Westgarth also admitted that the 
team is unsure how well these balloons will work or how long they will 
remain over Puerto Rico, so there remains some uncertainty regarding 
their effectiveness and longevity.

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        Project Loon may become Alphabet’s next spinoff company

A balloon-delivered wireless service project that began as a part of 
Google in 2013 might soon be spun off into its own company. Just a week 
ago, we reported that Google’s parent company was granted an …

Even so, this is the fastest that the Project Loon team has ever created 
and deployed balloons, which is certainly promising for the future of 
Alphabet’s experiment. Keep in mind that the team needed to wait until 
the FCC gave its blessing 
<https://www.androidauthority.com/giant-balloons-restore-wireless-service-puerto-rico-805823/> 
in early October, so it took them less than two weeks to make this possible.

There is still plenty of work to be done, with the FCC reporting today 
<http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db1109/DOC-347693A1.pdf> 
that almost 44 percent of cell sites on Puerto Rico are out of service. 
According to the agency, the majority of the island’s counties have 
between 20 and 60 percent of non-functioning cell sites. With Puerto 
Rico’s population standing at almost 3.5 million people, that is a 
significant number of people without any wireless service, but at least 
with the Project Loon news, some can finally get back online.

https://www.androidauthority.com/project-loon-puerto-rico-813800/